Qualcomm teases custom Arm-compatible Oryon CPU cores designed by Nuvia Qualcomm intends to ship processors within the next two years using custom Arm-compatible CPU cores designed in house by its acquired Nuvia team. These cores will be arranged in clusters and marketed under a new brand: Oryon. Thus future Qualcomm Snapdragon processors will use these Oryon cores, or so Qualcomm hopes. These …
“ Full disclosure: Qualcomm paid for this correspondent's flights and accommodation to cover the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii, today, though as should be abundantly clear from our past, current, and future coverage, this will have no effect on our independent reporting.”
Appreciate the (almost) full disclosure, though nice jolly!!
- Did ‘accommodation’ include hospitality and bar bills too ??
- Were your flights Business or Cattle Class ?? (You appear to be UK based).
"Did ‘accommodation’ include hospitality and bar bills too"
No, just the hotel room. Dinner, lunch, and drinks have been paid by myself or expensed to my publisher as necessary. Qualcomm got me here to attend the summit's breakout briefings, and that's about it.
"Were your flights Business or Cattle Class ??"
I live in San Francisco. My flights were normal seats, so cattle class? It was about a four-hour flight in which I read a (printed) Patrick Hamilton novel. Bonus points if you can guess the title.
I love that you're looking for scandal here but while Hawaii is a lovely place, and I've personally been many times as a Californian transplant, I've been working this week, either critically covering Qualcomm's announcements, or acting as Reg editor from Maui time.
C.
This post has been deleted by its author
I think ARM's heavy handed response by cancelling Qualcomm's license for the Nuvia designs is only going to further push RISC-V adoption in the industry... And perhaps in 15-20 years time, as it becomes irrelevant, ARM will be known as all but a patent troll, suing everyone in the industry who tries to design processors, as a last source of "revenue"?
Just recently in the last month Android upstreamed RISC-V support. I really hope it does overtake ARM eventually.
My guess is that Oryon will be designed with a translation layer like Apple's M1. I don't see any impediment (since the ratification of the Vector and Matrix extensions a year ago) to a powerful RISC-V processor that can take on whatever Apple's got by 2025. And since Qualcomm is now a member of the RISC-V Foundation... well, I'm surprised they haven't gone for the safe option (given that Arm are threatening to take all their marbles away).
Qualcomm might've joined the RISC-V Foundation for any number of reasons:
- They might have joined because they've seen SiFive's RISC-V co-processors successfully incorporated into Samsung tech, or because they've seen that Apple are reportedly interested in following suit.
- They might have joined following Intel's lead (since they seem to be interested in developing more performant processors), or having seen AMD's job ads seeking RISC-V designers.
- Or Qualcommm might have realised that RISC-V just does things better.
But anyway, Arm's latest petulance might well leave them with no choice:
"Qualcomm’s unreasonable, bad-faith demands that Arm comply with purported obligations for verification, delivery, and support and maintenance with respect to technology delivered and developed outside the scope of the Qualcomm ALA are contrary to the parties’ expectations and undermines the benefit to Arm from the Qualcomm ALA, thereby materially breaching that agreement’s terms and implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and entitling Arm to terminate the Qualcomm ALA under Section 14.2."
https://www.semianalysis.com/p/arms-nuclear-option-qualcomm-must
Whoever said "Let's wait until Qualcomm's next big announcement to file a denial of their allegations", believing that it would throw any shade on the event, was misguided : the uncertainty caused by not issuing such a denial immediately caused a lot of damage. And nobody in the industry is going to be impressed by the thuggish language being used by Arm in this whole litigation misadventure.
Heavy-handed response?
Qualcomm argued it could incorporate technology it purchased with Nuvia into Qualcomm chips using it's much cheaper low-power SoC licences to make laptop/desktop/server chips without paying the per SoC licences agreed between ARM and Nuvia (or available separately to Qualcomm albeit at a higher rate than the low lower SoCs).
I've used the car analogy before - if I buy an A-class Mercedes and then try to drive an S-class Mercedes away from the dealer, I'd be considered a thief. And I wouldn't expect much sympathy if I tried to argue that Mercedes and the Police were being "heavy handed".
And if I then told the world I was going to buy a Geely instead, I'd expect my credibility to be exhausted.
This post has been deleted by its author
There's only one Mercedes Benz, not two, with Arm setting the tariff arbitrarily for the lease of it.
"Ah! Mr. Nuvia! Delighted to see you. We can offer you a SpecialPrice(TM) to lease our ISA as an introductory offer."
"Mr. Qualcomm. Back again, I see. As one of our most valuable and valued customers over so many years, we'd like to offer you a SpecialPrice(TM) for the lease of our ISA."
If I were Qualcomm, I'd cross the street to a friendlier dealership, and a much better offer, rather than get stuck in the... protracted litigation that Arm are shoveling down. Chances are; Qualcomm/Nuvia would get an equivalent RISC-V processor out before they'll be able to get an ARM one to market - even if they started from scratch now.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
